texas

Family annihilator George Hassell was convicted of killing his wife and her eight children by his late brother, and has an appointment with the Texas executioner shortly. While awaiting his last date, George recalled the wife he killed in Whittier in 1917 and the three children he buried with her beneath their little home at 236 South Whittier Avenue. There seemed no reason not to confess this, so today, with some direction from long-suspicious neighbor Myrtle Lark and a little more from the agreeable killer, Constable Bob Way crawled under the house and unearthed the body of an infant. Its mother and siblings soon followed, thus explaining the wretched odors that had long plagued the spot.

In slightly gayer news, the grand new Mayfair Hotel has opened in the Crown Hill district of Los Angeles, providing the ideal vantage point for a drunken oil company exec named Ray Chandler to hole up for days with his secretary while threatening suicide to all who’ll listen.

C. D. Fabrick had just stepped into the Jefferson and San Pedro office of the Merchants’ National Trust and Savings Bank to begin his canvass of the theft and burglary situation in that part of the city. Therefore he thought there was a gag afoot when a booted Olde West cowboy type approached him, twirling a gun. “I’m a robbery and theft insurance underwriter,” said Fabrick, “what are you trying to do, kid me?” But Fabrick was not the butt of a joke but on the business end of a .45.

Fabrick, bank employees and customers were invited in thick Texas drawl to find themselves “a nice cozy spot on the floor” after which another bandit scooped $2,000 ($23,390 USD 2007) from the tills. They then lumbered out to a dust-covered touring car where a third bandit sat with a Winchester rifle across his knees. As the two egressed, one of the bandits held the door for an incoming customer and with true Texas courtesy drawled “It’s all right, lady. It’s all right. Walk right in.”

While bank manager R. E. Blaisdell was not in attendance for the show, he had been present for an east side Merchants’ bank shootout earlier in the year that left one policeman and one bandit dead.